Amelia Horrocks (2016) was so nervous about opening her International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) results, she asked her mother to do it for her!

“I was so scared I woke Mum up and I went into the room and asked her, can you open it?” Amelia laughed, speaking after receiving an award as St Peters 2016 IB Dux.

After some gentle prompting from her Mum, Amelia mustered the courage to look and couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw a 45, a perfect IB score.

“I opened it up and I just sat there and I started crying,” Amelia explained.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it! It felt so surreal. I had no idea that was going to happen,” she said modestly.

To put Amelia’s achievement into perspective, only 0.67% of the 14 070 students who sat for the IB Diploma exams in the November 2016 exam session achieved a perfect score. In Australia, Amelia was one of only 32 students who received a perfect score for the internationally recognised course, and only the second student at St Peters since Samuel Naylor achieved the same in 2015.

“It’s really quite elusive, so I just tried to put it out of my mind,” Amelia said.

“I wanted to get into medicine so I knew I would need a score in the 40s, but I didn’t really think about the 45!”

Amelia has realised her dream and is studying Biomedicine at the University of Queensland (UQ). She has been granted provisional entry into Medicine at UQ and will start in 2020.

Her perfect score was the equivalent of an ATAR of 99.95%, which also made her eligible to receive a Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for financial assistance of $12,000 per year over five years.

She believes the secret to her success started early in her senior years by developing good study habits, staying balanced, revising constantly and building on her knowledge base.

“If you can get into a mindset to try your best in everything, even from Year 8, it will become a habit and that really helps,” Amelia said, offering some sage advice.

“You just have to be consistent, chip away at things, work hard and try your best at everything, and always ask for help.”

Amelia said the IB Diploma, offered in Years 11 and 12 at St Peters Indooroopilly, was a big commitment, but she was attracted to the holistic learning opportunities of the programme, including the Extended Essay component, which she wrote about the etiologyof Major Depressive Disorder.

“I was pretty interested in Theory of Knowledge because I like Philosophy,” Amelia explained, and Psychiatry is a potential area of medicine I’m interested in.”

Teaching children to read is a team effort in Lower Primary at St Peters Indooroopilly and through the extension of the Support-a-Reader program, Year 2 students who require a little extra help, now have the added bonus of a Year 4 reading...